Life Marks: Adopted and Accepted
Last week we focused our attention on the issue of rejection and acceptance as we considered the greatest reason why you will not be rejected by the One who bought you – He paid too high of a price FOR YOU to let you go! And He paid that price because of His love for you, and the price was not paid in dollars, but by the shedding of His own blood. Peter referred to it as the price for our “redemption” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). If you have been redeemed by His blood, then you belong to Him and He will never reject you.
The Bible often uses the word “redemption,” as Peter did in the above passage. The concept comes from the first-century slave market. Imagine you were a slave brought to the platform to be offered to the highest bidder. Imagine that many bids were being shouted to the auctioneer to purchase you, and finally, another offer is shouted from the back of the crowd from someone who offered an unimaginable price for you, and thus “redeemed” you from the slave market. He chose to redeem “redeem” you, and He paid an exorbitant price in order to do it. But He not only redeemed you from the slave market, but from slavery itself.
And then imagine that immediately, your new Master asks the officer in charge to remove the chains from you. Standing in front of your new Master, Jesus looks at you and says, “You are free to go; I have set you free.” To which you reply, “Go? Where would I go? And where else would I want to go? You have just bought me for an incredible price, and now you have set me free! No, I’m staying right here. Just tell me how I can serve You.” And that is a picture of the life of the Christian. Set free from the penalty and power of sin, you are now free to serve your new Master because of your love and gratitude for Him because of the price that He paid for you.
Interestingly, once redeemed, He then “adopts” you into a new family, His family (Eph. 1:5). In the normal process of adoption, the court receives all of the application papers and legal documents, and then the child, along with his or her adoptive parents, stand before the judge or magistrate who pronounces the adoption “legal and binding.” Interestingly, God has no “natural born” children, simply because no one is ever “naturally” born into God’s family. At the moment of adoption, the newly-adopted child leaves his “natural-born” family inherited from his parents (that’s the way we all come into the world), and enters a new “supernaturally-born” family, that is, God’s family of former slaves who have been redeemed. No one enters God family through their parental heritage. There is only one way – you must be “supernaturally born” into God’s family. And, at the moment of adoption, you are considered to be “His child.”
I love what the Apostle John wrote in his first letter, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, and that is who we are” (1 Jn. 3:1). Notice that John is saying that we are not simply “called” children of God, but we “really are” His children. Furthermore, John recognized something special, that it was the love of the Father that caused Him to adopt us into His family. And John went further than just saying that it was because of His love for us, it was because of His “great love” for us. It was that love that sent Jesus to the cross to pay the price for our sins so that we could be redeemed and then adopted into His family.
If you are a genuine child of God, supernaturally “born” and “adopted” into His family by the price that was paid because of His great love for you, you will never be rejected by Him. There is no suggestion in the Bible that His adoption of you into His family can or ever will be reversed. You have been accepted into His family, a family made up of redeemed slaves, a family made up of people from every race and walk of life.
Knowing that you are His child and that you have been adopted and accepted into His family makes all the difference in the world in the way in which we see ourselves and live our lives. Now that’s something that I can “accept!” I pray that you can too.
